by Stephen King
Carter discovered that he was no longer undecided about what to do next.
“I’ve got something you may want.”
“Is that so?”
Big Jim had preceded Carter downstairs, giving Carter a chance to visit his locker. He opened it now and took out the envelope with VADER printed on it. He held it out to Big Jim. The bloody footprint stamped on it seemed to glare.
Big Jim opened the clasp.
“Jim,” Peter Randolph said. He had come in unnoticed and was standing by the overturned reception desk, looking exhausted. “I think we’ve got things quieted down, but I can’t find several of the new officers. I think they may have quit on us.”
“To be expected,” Big Jim said. “And temporary. They’ll be back when things settle and they realize Dale Barbara isn’t going to lead a gang of bloodthirsty cannibals into town to eat them alive.”
“But with this damned Visitors Day thing—”
“Almost everyone is going to be on their best behavior tomorrow, Pete, and I’m sure we’ll have enough officers to take care of any who aren’t.”
“What do we do about the press con—”
“Do you see I happen to be a little busy here? Do you see that, Pete? Goodness! Come over to the Town Hall conference room in half an hour and we’ll discuss anything you want. But for now, leave me the heck alone. ”
“Of course. Sorry.” Pete backed away, his body as stiff and offended as his voice.
“Stop,” Rennie said.
Randolph stopped.
“You never offered me condolences on my son.”
“I … I’m very sorry.”
Big Jim measured Randolph with his eyes. “Indeed you are.”
When Randolph was gone, Rennie pulled the papers out of the envelope, looked at them briefly, then stuffed them back in. He looked at Carter with honest curiosity. “Why didn’t you give this to me right away? Were you planning to keep it?”
Now that he’d handed over the envelope, Carter saw no option but the truth. “Yuh. For a while, anyway. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
Carter shrugged.
Big Jim didn’t pursue the question. As a man who routinely kept files on anyone and everyone who might cause him trouble, he didn’t have to. There was another question that interested him more.
“Why did you change your mind?”
Carter once again saw no option but the truth. “Because I want to be your guy, boss.”
Big Jim hoisted his bushy eyebrows. “Do you. More than him?” He jerked his head toward the door Randolph had just walked out of.
“Him? He’s a joke.”
“Yes.” Big Jim dropped a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “He is.
Come on. And once we get over there to the Town Hall, burning these papers in the conference room woodstove will be our first order of business.”
7
They were indeed high. And horrible.
Barbie saw them as soon as the shock passing up his arms faded. His first, strong impulse was to let go of the box, but he fought it and held on, looking at the creatures who were holding them prisoner. Holding them and torturing them for pleasure, if Rusty was right.
Their faces—if they were faces—were all angles, but the angles were padded and seemed to change from moment to moment, as if the underlying reality had no fixed form. He couldn’t tell how many of them there were, or where they were. At first he thought there were four; then eight; then only two. They inspired a deep sense of loathing in him, perhaps because they were so alien he could not really perceive them at all. The part of his brain tasked with interpreting sensory input could not decode the messages his eyes were sending.
My eyes couldn’t see them, not really, even with a telescope. These creatures are in a galaxy far, far away.
There was no way to know that—reason told him the owners of the box might have a base under the ice at the South Pole, or might be orbiting the moon in their version of the starship Enterprise—but he did. They were at home … whatever home was for them. They were watching. And they were enjoying.
They had to be, because the sons of bitches were laughing.
Then he was back in the gym in Fallujah. It was hot because there was no air-conditioning, just overhead fans that paddled the soupy, jock-smelling air around and around. They had let all the interrogation subjects go except for two Abduls who were unwise enough to snot off a day after two IEDs had taken six American lives and a sniper had taken one more, a kid from Kentucky everyone liked—Carstairs. So they’d started kicking the Abduls around the gym, and pulling off their clothes, and Barbie would like to say he had walked out, but he hadn’t. He would like to say that at least he hadn’t participated, but he had. They got feverish about it. He remembered connecting with one Abdul’s bony, shit-speckled ass, and the red mark his combat boot had left there. Both Abduls naked by then. He remembered Emerson kicking the other one’s dangling cojones so hard they flew up in front of him and saying That’s for Carstairs, you fucking sandnigger. Someone would soon be giving his mom a flag while she sat on a folding chair near the grave, same old same old. And then, just as Barbie was remembering that he was technically in charge of these men, Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled one of them up by the unwinding remains of the keffiyeh that was now his only clothing and held him against the wall and put his gun to the Abdul’s head and there was a pause and no one said no in the pause and no one said don’t do that in the pause and Sergeant Hackermeyer pulled the trigger and the blood hit the wall as it’s hit the wall for three thousand years and more, and that was it, that was goodbye, Abdul, don’t forget to write when you’re not busy cherrypopping those virgins.
Barbie let go of the box and tried to get up, but his legs betrayed him. Rusty grabbed him and held him until he steadied.
“Christ,” Barbie said.
“You saw them, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Are they children? What do you think?”
“Maybe.” But that wasn’t good enough, wasn’t what his heart believed. “Probably.”
They walked slowly back to where the others were clustered in front of the farmhouse.
“You all right?” Rommie asked.
“Yes,” Barbie said. He had to talk to the kids. And Jackie. Rusty, too. But not yet. First he had to get himself under control.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Rommie, is there more of that lead roll at your store?” Rusty asked.
“Yuh. I left it on the loading dock.”
“Good,” Rusty said, and borrowed Julia’s cell phone. He hoped Linda was home and not in an interrogation room at the PD, but hoping was all he could do.
8
The call from Rusty was necessarily brief, less than thirty seconds, but for Linda Everett it was long enough to turn this terrible Thursday a hundred and eighty degrees toward sunshine. She sat at the kitchen table, put her hands to her face, and cried. She did it as quietly as possible, because there were now four children upstairs instead of just two. She had brought the Appleton kids home with her, so now she had the As as well as the Js.
Alice and Aidan had been terribly upset—dear God, of course they had been—but being with Jannie and Judy had helped. So had doses of Benadryl all around. At the request of her girls, Linda had spread sleeping bags in their room, and now all four of them were conked out on the floor between the beds, Judy and Aidan with their arms wrapped around each other.
Just as she was getting herself under control again, there was a knock at the kitchen door. Her first thought was the police, although given the bloodshed and confusion downtown, she hadn’t expected them so soon. But there was nothing authoritative about that soft rapping.
She went to the door, pausing to snatch a dish towel from the end of the counter and wipe her face. At first she didn’t recognize her visitor, mostly because his hair was different. It was no longer in a ponytail; it fell to Thurston Marshall’s shoulders,
framing his face, making him look like an elderly washerwoman who has gotten bad news—terrible news—after a long, hard day.
Linda opened the door. For a moment Thurse remained on the stoop. “Is Caro dead?” His voice was low and hoarse. As if he screamed it out at Woodstock doing the Fish Cheer and it just never came back, Linda thought. “Is she really dead?”
“I’m afraid she is,” Linda said, speaking low herself. Because of the children. “Mr. Marshall, I’m so sorry.”
For a moment he continued to just stand there. Then he grabbed the gray locks hanging on either side of his face and began to rock back and forth. Linda didn’t believe in May-December romances; she was old-fashioned that way. She would have given Marshall and Caro Sturges two years at most, maybe only six months—however long it took their sex organs to stop smoking—but tonight there was no doubting the man’s love. Or his loss.
Whatever they had, those kids deepened it, she thought. And the Dome, too. Living under the Dome intensified everything. Already it seemed to Linda that they had been under it not for days but years. The outside world was fading like a dream when you woke up.
“Come in,” she said. “But be quiet, Mr. Marshall. The children are sleeping. Mine and yours.”
9
She gave him sun-tea—not cold, not even particularly cool, but the best she could do under the circumstances. He drank half of it off, set the glass down, then screwed his fists into his eyes like a child up long past his bedtime. Linda recognized this for what it was, an effort to get himself under control, and sat quietly, waiting.
He pulled in a deep breath, let it out, then reached into the breast pocket of the old blue workshirt he was wearing. He took out a piece of rawhide and tied his hair back. She took this as a good sign.
“Tell me what happened,” Thurse said. “And how it happened.”
“I didn’t see it all. Someone kicked me a good one in the back of my head while I was trying to pull your … Caro … out of the way.”
“But one of the cops shot her, isn’t that right? One of the cops in this goddam cop-happy, gun-happy town.”
“Yes.” She reached across the table and took his hand. “Someone shouted gun. And there was a gun. It was Andrea Grinnell’s. She might have brought it to the meeting with the idea of assassinating Rennie.”
“Do you think that justifies what happened to Caro?”
“God, no. And what happened to Andi was flat-out murder.”
“Caro died trying to protect the children, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Children that weren’t even her own.”
Linda said nothing.
“Except they were. Hers and mine. Call it fortunes of war or fortunes of Dome, they were ours, the kids we never would have had otherwise. And until the Dome breaks—if it ever does—they’re mine.”
Linda was thinking furiously. Could this man be trusted? She thought so. Certainly Rusty had trusted him; had said the guy was a hell of a good medic for someone who’d been out of the game so long. And Thurston hated those in authority here under the Dome. He had reasons to.
“Mrs. Everett—”
“Please, Linda.”
“Linda, may I sleep on your couch? I’d like to be here if they wake up in the night. If they don’t—I hope they don’t—I’d like them to see me when they come downstairs in the morning.”
“That’s fine. We’ll all have breakfast together. It’ll be cereal. The milk hasn’t turned yet, although it will soon.”
“That sounds good. After the kids eat, we’ll be out of your hair. Pardon me for saying this if you’re a homegirl, but I’ve had a bellyful of Chester’s Mill. I can’t secede from it entirely, but I intend to do the best I can. The only patient at the hospital in serious condition was Rennie’s son, and he checked himself out this afternoon. He’ll be back, that mess growing in his head will make him come back, but for now—”
“He’s dead.”
Thurston didn’t look particularly surprised. “A seizure, I suppose.”
“No. Shot. In the jail.”
“I’d like to say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
“Neither am I,” Linda said. She didn’t know for sure what Junior had been doing there, but she had a good idea of how the grieving father would spin it.
“I’ll take the kids back to the pond where Caro and I were staying when this happened. It’s quiet there, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find enough comestibles to last for a while. Maybe quite a while. I may even find a place with a generator. But as far as community life goes”—he gave the words a satiric spin—“I’m quits. Alice and Aidan, too.”
“I might have a better place to go.”
“Really?” And when Linda said nothing, he stretched a hand across the table and touched hers. “You have to trust someone. It might as well be me.”
So Linda told him everything, including how they’d have to stop for lead roll behind Burpee’s before leaving town for Black Ridge. They talked until almost midnight.
10
The north end of the McCoy farmhouse was useless—thanks to the previous winter’s heavy snow, the roof was now in the parlor—but there was a country-style dining room almost as long as a railroad car on the west side, and it was there that the fugitives from Chester’s Mill gathered. Barbie first questioned Joe, Norrie, and Benny about what they had seen, or dreamed about, when they passed out on the edge of what they were now calling the glow-belt.
Joe remembered burning pumpkins. Norrie said everything had turned black, and the sun was gone. Benny at first claimed to remember nothing. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth. “There was screaming,” he said. “I heard screaming. It was bad.”
They considered this in silence. Then Ernie said, “Burnin punkins doesn’t narrow things down much, if that’s what you’re trying to do, Colonel Barbara. There’s probably a stack of em on the sunny side of every barn in town. It’s been a good season for em.” He paused. “At least it was.”
“Rusty, what about your girls?”
“Pretty much the same,” Rusty said, and told them what he could remember.
“Stop Halloween, stop the Great Pumpkin,” Rommie mused.
“Dudes, I’m seeing a pattern here,” Benny said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Rose said, and they all laughed.
“Your turn, Rusty,” Barbie said. “How about when you passed out on your way up here?”
“I never exactly passed out,” Rusty said. “And all of this stuff could be explained by the pressure we’ve been under. Group hysteria—including group hallucinations—are common when people are under stress.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” Barbie said. “Now tell us what you saw.”
Rusty got as far as the stovepipe hat with its patriotic stripes when Lissa Jamieson exclaimed, “That’s the dummy on the library lawn! He’s wearing an old tee-shirt of mine with a Warren Zevon quote on it—”
“‘Sweet home Alabama, play that dead band’s song,’” Rusty said. “And garden trowels for hands. Anyway, it caught on fire. Then, poof, it was gone. So was the lightheadedness.”
He looked around at them. Their wide eyes. “Relax, people, I probably saw the dummy before all this happened, and my subconscious just coughed it back up.” He leveled a finger at Barbie. “And if you call me Dr. Freud again, I’m apt to pop you one.”
“Did you see it before?” Piper asked. “Maybe when you went to pick up your girls at school, or something? Because the library’s right across from the playground.”
“Not that I remember, no.” Rusty didn’t add that he hadn’t picked up the girls at school since very early in the month, and he doubted that any of the town’s Halloween displays had been up then.
“Now you, Jackie,” Barbie said.
She wet her lips. “Is it really so important?”
“I think it is.”
“People burning,” she said. “And smoke, with fire shining through it whenever it shifted. The whole
world seemed to be burning.”
“Yeah,” Benny said. “The people were screaming because they were on fire. Now I remember.” Abruptly he put his face against Alva Drake’s shoulder. She put her arm around him.
“Halloween’s still five days away,” Claire said.
Barbie said, “I don’t think so.”
11
The woodstove in the corner of the Town Hall conference room was dusty and neglected but still usable. Big Jim made sure the flue was open (it squeaked rustily), then removed Duke Perkins’s paperwork from the envelope with the bloody footprint on it. He thumbed through the sheets, grimaced at what he saw, then tossed them into the stove. The envelope he saved.
Carter was on the phone, talking to Stewart Bowie, telling him what Big Jim wanted for his son, telling him to get on it right away. A good boy, Big Jim thought. He may go far. As long as he remembers which side his bread’s buttered on, that is. People who forgot paid a price. Andrea Grinnell had found that out tonight.
There was a box of wooden matches on the shelf beside the stove. Big Jim scratched one alight and touched it to the corner of Duke Perkins’s “evidence.” He left the stove door open so he could watch it burn. It was very satisfying.
Carter walked over. “Stewart Bowie’s on hold. Should I tell him you’ll get back to him later?”
“Give it to me,” Big Jim said, and held out his hand for the phone.
Carter pointed at the envelope. “Don’t you want to throw that in, too?”
“No. I want you to stuff it with blank paper from the photocopy machine.”
It took a moment for Carter to get it. “She was just having a bunch of dope-ass hallucinations, wasn’t she?”
“Poor woman,” Big Jim agreed. “Go down to the fallout shelter, son. There.” He cocked his thumb at a door—unobtrusive except for an old metal plaque showing black triangles against a yellow field—not far from the woodstove. “There are two rooms. At the end of the second one there’s a small generator.”
